Moving people around a theme park is like one of those slide-tray puzzles. You move from one place to any other space that is clear, in the hope that eventually you will get to wherever you actually wanted to go.

Except that at Disneyland, there’s often not that extra, empty space you need to move around the board. It’s gridlock.

Disney latest step to address its overcrowding problem is to remove seating in several places around the park, in an attempt to improve guest flow. It’s an unfortunate trade-off that reflects the constant balancing act that parks must perform to keep their visitors happy.

Space inside theme parks serves one of two functions. It is either a place to go or an avenue to get to one of those places. Disneyland’s original hub-and-spoke design fulfilled those functions perfectly. All the destinations were in the four original themed lands surrounding the hub. So long as Disney could keep traffic moving from land to land through the hub in front of the castle, everything flowed smoothly.

But decades of expansion and growing crowds have left Disneyland looking more like the 5 at rush hour than some swiftly moving roundabout. First, Disney added lands behind its original lands — New Orleans Square, Critter Country and Toontown — making spaces that were once destinations do double-duty as pathways to other lands. The addition of the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land will amplify that problem when it opens next summer.

One of the things that has always distinguished Disneyland from most of its competitors in the theme park business is that the park itself has been an attraction, rather than a mere collection of rides and shows. People go to Disneyland to experience Disneyland, not just to ride Pirates of the Caribbean or Space Mountain or the Haunted Mansion. Disneyland is a place where you can hang out, enjoy a snack, take in the ambience and relax in a beautiful setting.

Of course, most of us do that by grabbing a space on a bench and sitting down. With fewer places to sit, more of Disneyland’s spaces in between its various rides and shows are becoming avenues instead of destinations. With a limited amount of space to accommodate every-growing crowds, perhaps it must be that way. Anyone who has tried to walk between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland after a parade should appreciate any extra inch of space that Disneyland can provide its guests who are trying to move through the park.

If you want a preview of what Disneyland’s future might hold, visit the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, where Disney plowed every tree and planter in the hub in front of the Magic Kingdom’s castle to clear a nearly-empty space at the heart of that park. With more than 20 million visitors a year, the Magic Kingdom couldn’t accommodate a crowd that big along with a bunch of scenery in the space where it holds so many dance parties, fireworks and castle shows to divert people from the park’s jam-packed rides.